The Mijikenda occupy the coastal strip extending from Lamu in the north to the Kenya/Tanzania border in the south, and approximately 30 km inland.

They inhabit the area bordered by the coastal cities of Mombasa and Malindi, and the inland towns of Mariakani and Kaloleni.

The Giriama is one of the largest groups of the Mijikenda people in the back-up area of the Northeast coast of Kenya.

Education programmes initiated by the state included building of central primary schools alongside the coast street.

The continuous migration of Giriama to places such as Takaungu and Mtwapa has allowed them to get access to paid labour, hence they have become part of manpower resources, which were once dominated by the Chonyi.

[3] The Giriama people are one of the nine groups which make up the Mijikenda, a Coastal Bantu community which means nine villages and is believed to have migrated from Shungwaya, a place near Fort Dumford in present-day Soma (Temu, 1971, p. 167).

At the top of the Giriama hierarchy are the ‘Kambi’ which are the council of elders who reside “in Kaya Fungo as the highest court of appeal for all social, political and civic matt” (Temu 1971, p. 167).

[citation needed] The Giriamia had a very strong sense for agriculture and were very adept at farming, rearing cows, growing millet, producing cotton and fishing in the Indian Ocean.

They were often involved in foreign trade of the goods they produced such as iron in exchange for clothes from the Swahili and Arabs.

The people of Giriama have gained a reputation of resistance as they have a long history of rebelling against pressure by foreigners including the “Galla, the Swahili, the Maasai, the Arabs and the…and under pressure at times they have migrated to new lands, other times they have negotiated with their oppressors, and they have occasionally violently resisted.” (Beckloff, 2009, p. 11).

However, "due to the overwhelming technological advantage of the British, the revolt was brought to a relatively quick and bloody end.

The British colonial government was attempting to find a source of labour for rapidly emerging cash crop plantations on the coast of Kenya for environmental benefits such as water quality, soil improvement and salinity mitigation.

[7] The Giriama were confronted with the "sudden arrival of these powerful foreigners who imposed taxes, censuses, forced labour, new rules, and regulation of commerce [which] was bound to be extremely upsetting.

Moreover, the newcomers showed no respect for the Giriama or their institutions as was clearly shown by the lack of sensitivity on the question of the kay".

[8] The Giriama council of elders were unsuccessful in rescinding the British policies as they could not draw on an effective military system, rather it was “neither permanent, aggressive, nor particularly strong.

[13] The Giriama people have adopted their own traditional method that is arranged by the parents where the bride is ‘priced’ and given to their sons.

The Giriama produced numerous goods that would boost its economy through the distribution of reared cow, goats and sheep.

Some people follow the traditions of the past whilst some indulged in the faith of Islam or Christianity after the influence of the foreigners such as the British or Arab.

The Giriama people traditionally believed in the spiritual god ‘Mulingu’ and the religion “lacked priests, territorial or spirit-possession cults, or even an innovative leader to translate old customs, such as the eradication of witchcraft” (Brantley, 1981, p. 4).

Giriama have long been pressed to convert to Islam by Swahili and Arab patrons, employers, and prospective kinby-marriage, but for at least forty years, these pressures have taken supranatural as well as social forms.

The Sacred Void: Spatial Images of Work and Ritual among the Giriama of Kenya (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology).